


Pantera on Ice

by Harihat



Series: E&C Moments [1]
Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Car Accidents, Cuddling & Snuggling, Feelings Realization, Gen, M/M, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 09:31:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18363290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harihat/pseuds/Harihat
Summary: Staring out into the endless darkness that lay before him, Adam couldn’t help but wonder: who was madder? The lunatics who put markers down on a goddamn lake and called it a road, or the idiots who wanted to drive a couple of three-tonne vans across said “road” and not suffer a horrible, watery demise.The idiots. He decided. The idiots are definitely madder.





	Pantera on Ice

Staring out into the endless darkness that lay before him, Adam couldn’t help but wonder: who was madder? The lunatics who put markers down on a goddamn _lake_ and called it a road, or the idiots who wanted to drive a couple of three-tonne vans across said “road” and not suffer a horrible, watery demise.

_The idiots_. He decided. _The idiots are definitely madder._

He turned up Pantera on the dial and hoped it would drown out the rest of the ominous cracks from beneath the wheels.

A glance in his rear view mirror told him that the others were making the most of the rest, Terry had his head back against the rear door and was letting out the occasional score whilst Tony was slumped in a similar position up against the back of the driver’s seat, providing a sort-of pillow for Cheech’s feet. He didn’t blame them, it had been a real long few weeks. Long enough to make him muse briefly on the wisdom of taking a nap on the steering wheel and hoping for the best.

Beside him, he could just about make out a glimpse of blond under the bundle of blankets propped up against the passenger side door. Only wrestlers, he mused, could sleep through heavy metal at full blast. If only someone had mentioned to him earlier that it was such a crucial job skill – it would certainly have bulked up his resumé.

His eyes flickered shut for a moment and he forced himself awake. Only one more lake to go. One more lake and it was time to switch. To _sleep._ Just one more endless expanse of white…

And white…

And white…

And black…

Fuck!

Adam pumped the brakes desperately as van headlights revealed more and more of the gigantic schism in the ice. It was easily the size of a football field and they were headed straight for it.

Bodies tumbled behind him as the van skidded and slid its way to a merciful halt just metres from the brink of _nothing_. Fighting to unwrap his whitened knuckles from around the steering wheel, Adam sunk back in his seat and thanked every deity who sprung to mind that they were still on solid ground. Or what passed for “solid ground” in the freezing north of Manitoba, anyway.

“Adam? What the-?” It was a good job that they weren’t speeding toward a horrible icy death because Jay hadn’t even uncurled himself from his blankets yet. “What’s going on?”

Before Adam could even begin to explain the giant _clusterfuck_ they had sailed themselves into, they were both interrupted by a wail of anguish from the back seat.

“What the fuck is that? Oh my God, we’re going to die. We are GOING TO DIE.” Terry hugged the back of the driver’s seat and whimpered. “What the fuck am I doing out here? I don’t belong out here. This is some crazy Canadian shit, I don’t belong here.”

“The Rhyno’s yammering.” Tony yawned. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t _do_ anything.” Adam hissed through gritted teeth. “Aside from save your asses. This was a crazy idea, this lake is a death trap.”

Tony peered out through the one clear patch on the van’s windshield and frowned. “It’s a puddle.”

“It’s a goddamn hole in the ice, Tony.”

“Give me a minute.”

The others chorused their disapproval as Tony opened the rear doors and hopped out into the snow. Terry started muttering some sort of prayer to himself whilst Jay busied himself with burrowing deeper into the blankets, apparently deciding that crises were best dealt with whilst unconscious.

There was an ominous clanking noise, and a crack, and finally a _splash_ before Tony reappeared in the wing mirror, triumphantly hold a stick aloft.

“It’s a foot deep, guys, seriously. We can cross this thing.”

It was testament to how many crazy death trips they had already undertaken this winter that nobody protested all that much. Jay reluctantly unfolded himself from his napping position and stretched his legs out, grumbling as his joints gave a soft _click_.

“Well, I ain’t doing it.” Adam threw Tony the car keys and set about fastening the outer zip of his coat. “Go crazy, boss.”

It took them all a moment to rearrange themselves and then they were off, Tony flooring the gas and making them all scream warnings as they scrambled to hold onto something, anything that would provide them with something resembling shelter.

The rev counter struck red, the engine groaned and the tyres spun. _If this is it_ , Adam thought to himself, _this is a fucking stupid way to die._

“I don’t wanna be here.” Terry muttered, over and over. “I don’t wanna fucking be here. This guy is crazy. I want to go home.”

Cheech, who hadn’t breathed a damn _word_ since the lake had opened itself up managed a calming “Shut up and hang on.” And the four of them ducked and covered the best they could.

“We’re doing it! We’re doing it!” Tony let out a roar of triumph as the van made land. Terry was the first to move, bolting through the rear van doors and sprawling into the snow covered ground which he kissed, over and over muttering promises to never leave it again. Cheech let out a long, slow exhale whilst Adam busied himself with carefully prising Jay’s iron grip from his arm. There would be bruises tomorrow, he was confident of that. Shame they weren’t still on tour, really. They made for some real authenticity.

A low rumble broke through the screech of Pantera over the speakers and Tony reached over to finally shut it off. “Damn, the ring van. Hey, hey guys”

The second van managed to stop well short of the ice hole, so some luck was at least on their side. What wasn’t, however, was the hope of Brian and Tony breaking the habit of a lifetime and actually agreeing on something.

“Hey!” Brian had called out as soon as they made it far enough around the hole to come within earshot. “Hey, you crazy fucker, how the hell did you get across that thing?”

Tony shrugged. “It’s a foot deep, max, you can make it.”

Brian stared at Tony as if he was completely insane, a theory that Adam felt had a fair amount of merit. Sane people, after all, didn’t plunge vans into frozen lakes in the middle of a Canadian winter and expect good results.

“I’m going round the edge.” Brian decided. Tony objected straight away.

“No way, man. Through the middle, I’m telling you.”

But Brian was already on his way back to the cab, leaving Joe, Zakk and the others no choice but to scramble out of the van and get well clear of the edge.

It soon turned out not to be clear enough  as a dozen torrents of icy water shot out from under the van wheels, soaking anyone unfortunate enough to be standing nearby. Adam cast a glance at Jay, who seemed to be firmly regretting his life choices – particularly those that involved no longer being huddled in a blanket nest with he feet up against the heating vents.

“Brian, man. You’re gonna get stuck! You’ve gotta slow down!” Zakk yelled, waving his arms in a vain attempt to win the other man’s attention. Brian revved on, oblivious, sending up another wave. The damn thing wasn’t getting any further forward, the water was too deep and the van too heavy. And there wasn’t a tow truck for hundreds of miles.

The van’s engine stalled and they all stood in horrified silence for a few moment. That’s when it happened.

Jay couldn’t have been more than a foot away from Adam when he vanished through the ice.

It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds until he resurfaced, coughing.

It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds after that, that Adam’s paralysed limbs finally spurred into action and he grabbed his friend the best he could.

It just felt like years.

Years before Jay’s frozen fingers managed to get a hand hold on him and he managed to pull them both onto the ice. Before they got clear of the hole and the shock and the moment of horror that he knew was going to stay with him for a really long time after they finally got out of this frozen nightmare.

“Jay?”

His friend flinched away from the chill of his breath against his face, choosing instead to grab onto Adam’s shoulders as they both shakily made their way upright. Adam’s heart was hammering inside his chest in a mixture of fear and panic and shock and it made him cling onto Jay’s coat all the more even though some part of him _knew_ that they should be getting that thing off him.

“Shit!” Zakk was on his feet and racing towards them the best he could in the slippery conditions. “Damn it Jay, you gotta get back to the other van, you’re gonna freeze to death out here.”

Adam wasn’t even sure Jay was hearing him. He didn’t seem to be responding at all, not even to shiver. Damn it, wasn’t not shivering a bad sign? He was sure he’d heard that before but right then he couldn’t remember anything right.

“Get his coat off, he’s soaked.”

With shaking hands, Adam did as he was told, trying not to notice how the garment crunched beneath his fingers as the frigid air froze it solid.

“Come on buddy, can you walk?” Zakk took Jay’s arm and squeezed, “you gotta get in the warm.”

Adams arms dropped uselessly by his sides. His mind was shot, everything a whirling nightmare of ice and danger and freaking _hypothermia_ if they weren’t careful and he should be _doing_ something, shouldn’t he?

“Hey!” Tony’s voice rang out of the darkness as the older man jogged his way towards them. “You seen the Rhyno? He just ran off.”

Two friends facing a horrible icy death was just too much for Adam to cope with right then. “Which way?”

“Over there, I think?” Tony gesturing back towards God’s Lake Narrow but there was nothing to be seen out there in the darkness. “Somewhere over that way,”

“There’s nothing back that way.” Zakk hissed, “We just came from there.”

“I know that, dammit!” Tony snapped. “I know that, and you know that, but that freaking petrified kid doesn’t know that right now, okay?”

Later, Adam would have been ridiculously grateful that Zakk had a better head in a crisis than he did. Clearly deciding that one emergency at a time was _quite enough thank you very much_ the other man wrapped an arm securely around Jay’s waist and started walking him back towards the other van.

Adam stood frozen, knowing that he should be _doing_ something but struggling with what the hell form that was supposed to take when Jay was turning into a freaking icicle out here in the frozen wastes of Manitoba and no one was coming to rescue any of them any time soon. Was the heater in the other van even still working after their recent dunking? What if it wasn’t? What the hell would happen to Jay then? And, more to the point, what the hell was that shape rapidly advancing toward him out of the wintry night?

“Oh God.”

In hindsight, Adam had known that there was really only one other person one there on the ice that night. But that didn’t stop him from staring in disbelief at the three hundred and twenty five pound man hurtling toward him as far as his stumpy legs would carry him.

“Adam. Adam, oh my god. Is Jay? Is he?”

Still mute with the shock of whatever the hell had just happened, Adam pointed back at the van and stared dazedly at Rhyno’s retreating back as the other man disappeared into the distance.

“Adam? Adam!”

The shout went some way to snapping him back to his senses. It was Cheech, crouched down at the other van. “We need you, man. We’re gonna have to rock this out.”

Rock it out? On this ice? Are you crazy? Adam wanted to scream all of those questions and more but something held him back. He didn’t have the words so he just mutely followed the sound of Cheech’s voice to where the van lay stranded.

“Grab there. There’s two of us a side, rock it slowly.”

The van creaked ominously as they began their task, a far cry to the throttle of the engine which had accompanied their earlier disaster. It soon became obvious that the van wasn’t going to move.

“What the hell are we going to do now?” Zakk asked no one in particular.

It was in that moment that Adam’s power of thought finally returned to him. Oh boy, Terry wasn’t going to be happy with him, but if he didn’t want them all to freeze to death in some artic wasteland he was going to have to man the hell up. It was time to get the Rhyno.

It quickly transpired that the Rhyno did not want to be got.

In fact, the Rhyno very, very much wanted to stay thoroughly _ungot_  in the nice warm van that wasn’t currently sitting in a frozen lake.

Adam thought Rhyno probably had the right idea, but hey, there were greater forces at work than just the two of them.

He jogged to the other van as quickly as the slippery surface would allow him, calling out to Terry. There was no response, which wasn’t terribly surprising. Undoubtedly Terry had done the math relating to what was awaiting him outside and had made the decision to stay far, far from it.

Well, if he had to do this the hard way, so be it.

Adam pulled back the driver’s side door and scrambled inside as quickly as he could to avoid letting the heat out. Jay needed that heat. Oh god, _Jay._

“Hey.”

Adam could honestly say that he had never, ever been happier to see his best friend. He might have looked so small and sad, bundled up in every blanket he could feasible squeeze around his frame, but he was here and he was alive and it was honestly the best thing Adam had seen all damn year.

“Hey yourself.”

Jay’s lips were tinged a faint purplish hue that suggested a fading blue and he was paler than Adam had ever seen him, save that horrible moment out on the lake. His boots and socks were sat up against the windshield – frozen straight up in a fashion that would have been comical were it not so horribly close to home. His other clothes weren’t faring much better and Adam made a mental note to go and grab his out kit bag at the next available opportunity once Jay was safely dry. He couldn’t very well sit here in his pants all night. Not when the mercury was 40 degrees below.

He wasn’t sure what possessed him to do what he did next – maybe he just needed to reassure himself that Jay really was still alive and really was going to make it. Maybe he just really, really needed a hug himself – who knew?

 His arms wound their way tightly around the other man, almost of their own volition and he hugged Jay as close as he dared. He was so, so cold but at the same time so indisputably alive that it made Adam’s heart sing.  Jay’s closeness was chilling him to the bone, but all the same, the moment that Jay relaxed into his tight hug and breathed out in relief made something melt inside of him. Jay was here. Jay was okay. They could fix the damn van and then everything would be okay.

“Thanks for pulling me out.”

Adam tightened his hold, resting his chin against Jay’s damp hair. “I didn’t do much, I was pretty useless really.”

“Are you kidding? You’re honest to god my hero right now. I thought I was going to get trapped under there. Hey – ow!”

“Sorry.” Adam guiltily released Jay from his vice grip. “Just relieved you’re okay.”

“Just a human popsicle, right?”

“Right.”

If he’d noticed the slow trail of his fingers up and down Jay’s arm, he wasn’t entirely certain he’d have stopped it anyway, even though it seemed to make Jay shiver all the more.

It wasn’t until the shift of Terry’s weight in the back seat reminded them both he was still there that they turned away from each other, Adam blushing and Jay managing to restore the tiniest amount of warmth to his cheeks himself.

Adam braced himself and reminded his traitor brain what he’d come here for in the first place. Slowly, carefully, as if afraid of startling a wild animal, he turned to where Terry was rocking back and forth and gave him a gentle shake.

“We need the Rhyno” Adam told him, gently nudging his shoulder. “Come on, man.”

“I’m not going back out there.” Came the response. “I’m not. It’s a death trap.”

“The van’s stuck in the ice. We need you.”

“I can’t.”

“I’ll come with you.”

It was this promise, rather than any other details of their impending doom, which appeared to rouse Rhyno to action. Slowly, carefully, he shuffled his way to the back door of the van and nodded.

“You promise?”

“Promise.”

After getting out of the doors as quickly as possible to conserve the heat, the two of them made their way across the frozen surface as quickly as they dared (as quickly as Terry dared, anyway, which wans’t very fast at all)

The others weren’t making much progress, but surely with two more men – one man and one behemoth – they could do it, right?

The others scurried to their feet as they saw reinforcements approaching and they raced to their positions. “Come on!”

Gritting his teeth against the cold, Adam took his place beside Terry and joined the others as they began to rock the van.  The first push had water flying everywhere, but on the second they somehow, mercifully made some progress.

“Give it one more!” Tony roared. They all pushed together, straining against the cold metal and finally, _finally_ the van found its footing.

Tony came over to clap Adam on the shoulder. “Job well done, kid. I’ll get this one through, you head back to the warm.”

Adam knew what he really meant: _head over to the other van and check that your little mate hasn’t frozen to death in your absence, okay? Because that would really put a dampner on the rest of the trip._

He didn’t need telling twice. Leaving a shell shocked Rhyno standing on the ice, he headed back to the other van, half jogging and half sliding his way around the outside of the hole that had caused so much trouble. Had it really been less than thirty minutes since he first saw that damn thing through the wind shield? It feel like a hundred years at this point.

The van was struggling into warmth by the time he made it and it hit him like a wall after the frozen air outside.

“Jay?”

There was no immediate answer, just a vague stirring from the blanket bundle and a sleepy “Adam?”

“Hey you. You got out of all the work.”

The blanket creature blinked vaguely at him. “huh?”

He was confused. Confused was bad, right? Adam trued to remember his cold weather first aid and drew the conclusion that it probably was. Which undoubtedly meant that Jay needed warming up pretty damn quick.

“Let me in those blankets.” He made quick work of his own coat and gloves.

“You cold?”

“No, Jay, _you_ are. Come on.”

Jay gave a half hearted protest as Adam peeled back the blankets and replaced them with his own long limbs. It didn’t last long. Adam imagined that anything warm felt pretty good right then, even if you weren’t really used to cuddling up to your best friend whilst most of your clothes thawed out on a nearby radiator.

“Put your arms round me, come on.”

“Hmmph. You taking advantage of me?”

Adam huffed a small laugh into his friend’s hair. “Shut up. I’m trying to save you from hypothermia you idiot.”

“Huh. Disappointing.”

He was delirious. Adam told himself. Jay was delirious and he himself was suffering from adrenaline poisoning or something. Shock, maybe. That would explain why his insides knotted up inside him at Jay’s words. The same way it explained why his skin felt shivery wherever he was pressed up against his friend. He’d recently been a popsicle, after all. Probably a side effect of the near death experience. The way his breath caught in his throat, the way his chest felt tight – it really didn’t mean anything.

It really meant nothing at all.


End file.
